I was proud of him. We convened for dinner that evening, Topher, Kim, Julie, and I, to celebrate Topher’s accomplishment. His muscles were so tight he could barely make it from the car up the curbside. With a lot of moans and groans, he finally made it inside the restaurant. At the end of dinner, he needed us to help get him out of his seat. “Ohhh . . . I’m so sore,” he moaned. “Just wait until tomorrow morning,” I said. “It’s gonna get worse?” “Just you wait.” Then I added casually, “Of

have run: the Atacama Desert, Patagonia, Mount Fuji, the Australian outback, Namibia, the Gobi Desert, Mont Blanc, the Sahara, Antarctica, New Jersey (okay, maybe not the most remote and exotic of locations, but there’s certainly no shortage of unusual native wildlife). With the success of my first book and my growing notoriety, I saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to turn what I loved to do— running and racing across the globe—into what I do (i.e., turn my passion into my vocation).

deformed the more distant spirals, giving them the appearance of disfigured leviathans lurching awkwardly across the desert floor. It was nearly impossible to get a solid look at these bizarre figures dancing across the desert floor as the superheated air stung my eyes and the blowing debris clouded my vision. Perhaps there really were demons out here, as the early biblical accounts had reported. After several hours of running along this haunted plane, an abrupt variation appeared in the

detect a particular vulnerability in his nature, a character flaw that one day I thought I might be able to exploit: Topher was very trusting of me. Perhaps too trusting. Being the oldest child in my family, I was extremely adept at discovering such susceptibilities. My younger brother, Kraig, though gullible, had figured me out long ago. Kraig had played the sucker way too many times as I dragged him along on farfetched escapades throughout our childhood. Now my welcome with him was worn out.

Hawaiian-style pizza. It was delicious, and I began devouring it while running. Immediately, the phone rang. “Dude, that looks so tasty!” It was a friend from Australia—it was suppertime the next day down under. Even when nobody walked by on the street, those calls reminded me that I was on worldwide display. Because I had been consuming so much liquid the past forty hours, trips to the restroom became more frequent. When I stepped off the treadmill, I no longer traveled on foot; I levitated. It